From my experience Illustrator is awesome for having fun with text.... however you get a copy is up to you, but I recommend running quickly through the tutorials otherwise you end up like me 3 years ago and ya just despise the program and assume it sucks ass.

Illustrator is a good program. Freehand functions similarly. I tend to use Photoshop myself. I use the selection tool on a new layer, fill a bubble with color and then use the stroke layer option. It may not be the best option, but it works for me.

It's easy. Use paint make a circle(not a round-edge rectangle) then erase a portion of the circle,then use the 2 straight lines on the sides to point the bubble toward your character. Then,use the text box. And type your text.

The best thing to happen to some people,is Resident Farmer. The best thing to happen to me is cel-shaded graphics and translated Japanese Anime. Whoo-hoo!

Well the type of bubbling I use is kind of like those stick on bubbles for pictures. You've seen those right? They're little stickers. I make my bubble stickers in micrographix (a photoshop mutant) and just pop them onto my comic. Here's a quick tute of how I do it:

1.) First I make the "stickers" by using my masking option to make different bubble shapes with the pen and circle sizers. I look at that with the ruby overlay to make sure that it doesn't look too stupid.

2.) Next I use the stroke option to get my bubble border. This changes depending on what I plan to do with it later.

3.) Lastly I bucket fill the background around the bubble with a bright color like yellow or bright orange.

Using the Bubble Stickers:

All I do is negative mask the colored area and copy the bubble, then I paste it as a new layer on my comic. This means that i can move them around and all that. When I'm ready to letter, I just smooth my layers and set up a text box in each bubble. Handy as can be, though it does take longer than just drawing them in.

Hope this helps ya, for demonstrations on what the bubbles look like, just visit http://kectug.keenspace.com. All of the newer comics on the page use 'em.

Oki ni
Bun

http://www.onehouraxis.comThere is no emotion; there is peace.
There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.
There is no passion; there is serenity.
There is no death; there is the Force.